POLE 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Mute Records expand their indie major empire with the announcement of yet another album by Stefan Betke aka. Pole, 'Tempus'. The title of the album refers to the Latin word for time, which was later co-opted into the German language to refer to grammatical tense - thus, Pole's seven-suite album is literally a meditation on linguistic time. In comparison to his earlier albums, Pole's sound is unusually urgent on 'Tempus' - implicitly urging us to reconsider our warped notion of time through effects like dub delay - and incorporates more motifs from jazz than ever before.

Review: In honour of the launch of the "Love Record Stores" project, Mute has decided to make Pole's brilliant third album, "3", available in a special yellow-vinyl edition. That's as good an excuse as any to add it to your record collection, though the set's undisputed quality and stone-cold classic status is arguably more of a selling point. By the time he originally released it, Stefan Betke had successfully fine-tuned his spaced-out, minimalist electronic dub style. Combining hypnotic rhythms, some influenced by hip-hop and others by Basic Channel style dub techno, with deep dub basslines, opaque electronics and dusty, often glitchy samples, Betke used "3" to cement his reputation as a genuine sonic innovator. While all of his albums are essential, "3" is arguably the best of the lot.